Let's get organised

This is a telling image. News executives were asked in WAN-IFRA's World News Publishers Outlook: 'What is the most important change that has to be implemented in your news organisation over the next year?'

It wasn't monetising new products. Nor was it a fresh approach to social media (this in actual fact came bottom). What captains of the journalism industry came back with was 'organisational structure'.

Organisational structure can refer to a raft of things - but it strongly suggests executives feel the changes being wrought on the news industry demands a solid framework in place at their news orgs. And perhaps many of them are far from satisfied with their own internal structures...

Some 21% of respondents believed this was of overarching importance. More so that talent at a commercial, editorial or managerial. More important than finding efficiencies or cost-cutting too.

The 7th annual 22-question survey of news executives was conducted in 10 languages across all the major regions of the world. The vast majority of the nearly 250 respondents - 43% - identified themselves as “senior managers”, a category that the researchers defined to include owners, publishers and CEOs. The work was conducted by Dr Francois Nel and Dr Coral Milburn-Curtis.